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QUENELLES, LOBSTER (for Fish Soups)
Take the meat, pith, coral, and spawn of a small hen lobster, and pound it to a paste. Mix with it two table-spoonfuls of finely-grated bread-crumbs and three ounces of butter. Season the forcemeat with a tea-spoonful of anchovy, a little salt, nutmeg, and cayenne, and moisten with the yolks of two eggs and the white of one. Test a little piece, to be sure that it is properly seasoned and firm, and if necessary, add the yolk of another egg. Mould the forcemeat into small quenelles, and brown these in hot fat, or poach them in boiling water. They may be served with fish, soup, or with good gravy poured over them, as a breakfast or supper dish. Time to fry, according to size. Probable cost of lobster, 1s. to 2s.
A Victorian fish forcemeat: lobster pounded with crumbs, butter and egg, then shaped and either fried or poached. The hinge is the water temperature — despite the wording, a rolling boil will shred the quenelles.
- Poach below the boilBring the water or light fish stock to a bare shiver, around 170–180F, and hold it there. Actual boiling breaks the egg bind and the quenelles disintegrate or turn spongy. Two to four minutes for small ones, until they float and feel resilient.
- "A small hen lobster"A female lobster of about 1 to 1.5 lb, which yields roughly 4–6 oz of picked meat. The hen is specified for the coral (the roe, which turns scarlet when cooked) and the spawn — the external eggs carried under the tail. Berried hens are illegal to land in many fisheries now, so buy a cooked lobster and use the tomalley and any coral present.
- "Pith"Ambiguous in Victorian usage. It generally means the soft creamy matter in the body cavity — the tomalley, or liver — rather than anything fibrous. Discard the gills and the gritty stomach sac behind the head.
- A tea-spoonful of anchovyThis means anchovy essence, a thin bottled sauce. Anchovy paste is more concentrated; use about half a teaspoon, or mash one salted anchovy fillet to a purée.
- Grated bread-crumbsDry crumbs grated from stale crumb, not the sandy commercial kind and not fresh soft crumbs. Two tablespoons is little enough that the mixture depends chiefly on the egg for structure.
- Test the seasoningThe instruction to test a small piece before shaping the rest is worth keeping. Cold lobster paste tastes flat; salt, cayenne and nutmeg all read differently once set. Adjust, and add the extra yolk only if the trial piece falls apart.
- ShapingTwo dessertspoons dipped in hot water give the traditional pointed oval. Chill the mixture for half an hour first — soft butter at room temperature makes it unmanageable.
- Yield and servingExpect about 16 to 20 small quenelles from a 1.5 lb lobster, enough to garnish soup for six or to make a supper dish for three with sauce. Fried, they want a good hot fat and only a minute or two a side.
Quenelles came into English cookery from France in the nineteenth century, the word itself generally traced to the German Knödel, dumpling, by way of Alsace. Their function in a book like Cassell's is structural: a well-made fish soup needed a garnish with body, and pounded forcemeat shaped into neat ovals supplied it without the coarseness of a plain dumpling. Before food processors this was heavy work — the meat went into a mortar and was pounded, then often rubbed through a sieve, which is why so many Victorian forcemeat recipes read as though labour were free. The hen lobster is called for because the coral and spawn gave the pale forcemeat its pink colour and a concentrated flavour; the same coral, dried and pounded with butter, was a common Victorian colouring for lobster sauce. The closing suggestion that the quenelles serve as a breakfast or supper dish shows the frugal instinct running through the book: a garnish for one meal becomes the main business of another.